


A Guiding Influence

by Cousin Shelley (CousinShelley)



Category: Deadwood
Genre: Alternate Canon, Chocolate Box assignment, F/M, Season/Series 03, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-13 15:58:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13573932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/pseuds/Cousin%20Shelley
Summary: Fragile fucking flowers aren't the ones to spare a thought and time to tend, as they'll be the first reclaimed by the dirt. It's the buds that open in the wild atop a sturdy stem, leaning in the wind but springin' back, might prove worth the rain and morning sunshine.





	A Guiding Influence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dancingsalome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancingsalome/gifts).



> A late season 3 canon divergence in your Chocolate Box. Happy Valentine's Day! :)

“Al?” Two knocks followed Dan’s voice. “You decent?”

Al Swearengen sat at his desk in his finest striped suit, feet up on the corner. He swirled the dregs of whiskey in his glass. “Decent? Depends on the context, doesn’t it, Dan?”

He smirked at the sigh that came, loud enough to carry through a closed door.  

“Can I come in, Al?”

“Only if you must.”

Dan pushed the door open. “Are you goin’? Or are you goin’ to send me back over there with excuses, and make me come back here with her message to you, and--”

“Your point is abundantly clear, Dan. You can relax. I’ll not be sending you with any messages that I can more easily deliver myself.” Al tossed the whiskey back, swallowed and smacked his lips. “I shouldn’t go. I should make her come to me, on my own terms, lestwise she start thinking she holds any sway over my decisions and actions.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go.” Dan shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“But if I go . . .” Al smoothed his hair down with the palms of his hands and dropped his feet to the floor. “Mightn’t she be mildly moved by the gesture, her knowin’ I’m not exactly a man to be led around by the nose by someone just because she’s in possession of a pair of tits? Might gain me favor in her eyes, make it easy to persuade her of other things down the line. When _I_ want to sway _her_.”

“Well maybe you should go, then.” Dan took off his hat and combed his oily hair back with his fingers. “But I wish you’d make a decision so I can be done with it.”

Al leaned back and widened his eyes. “All right, all right. I know you’re not a man blessed with patience, but let’s not forget who’s the boss of who here.”

Dan leaned against the wall. “Sorry, Al. Ellsworth's widow makes me tense, is all.”

“Pray tell why?”

“She’s always so laced up and proper and talks just so.” He shrugged. “Uppity cu--”

“Dan.” Al’s voice had dropped an octave and stopped Dan as short as if he’d shouted. “Close your yap. And mind your tongue concerning Mrs. Ellsworth. She’s done nothing to earn such ire from you.”

Dan blinked like something jabbed him in the eye, his head tilting back and forth on his neck as if only attached in the center. “Not personally, maybe, but _Brom Garret_? After I went and did all that, she still owns the claim. That oughtta get her a daily cussin’ from you, let alone that way she looks at everybody straight down her god damned nose.”

Al shot up from the chair, enjoying a measure of satisfaction in his gut when Dan flinched. “She’s not yet fully accustomed to the vagaries and societal expectations of life in a camp like Deadwood, but she’s getting there. She simply needs a guiding influence experienced in the ways of these places. And since she has invited me to visit, perhaps, in her city-bred and cultured and fancy fucking wisdom, she recognizes that I could provide such a steadying hand.”

The corner of Dan’s mouth turned up. “I think she just wants to thank yeh, Al.”

“We all have to start somewhere.”

***

Alma Ellsworth paced in front of her door, waiting for Mr. Swearengen to arrive.

 _Alma Ellsworth_. That name still sounded foreign inside her own mind. She felt like Alma Garret, and every time she had to make a correction in her thoughts a wave of guilt threatened to tilt her off her feet. She hadn’t yet grown familiar with being called by the poor man’s name, and was already his widow.

Mr. Ellsworth had been cheated, both by her lack of enthusiasm and circumstance.

Three sharp knocks were followed by, “Al Swearengen, ma’am.”

 _Ma’am._ That was Mr. Swearengen at his most ingratiating. Alma should have appreciated the civility, but it didn’t suit him.

Alma opened the door and managed what she hoped was a pleasant expression. “I’m happy that you’ve agreed to see me, Mr. Swearengen. Please, come in.”

He stepped through the door, his eyes sweeping the room. 

“Sofia is with Trixie for a short while.”

His shoulders dropped in what she guessed was relief. He _should_ be tense about seeing her, given his history with her child. Another surge of guilt swept over Alma at how she didn’t hate him for it.

She hated so many men. Her father, for the things he owed, and the things he'd taken. She’d hated Brom sometimes, because he’d been devoted yet wholly inadequate, and not her choice. She’d hated poor Mr. Ellsworth in a few dark moments in the beginning, because he wasn’t Seth Bullock, and for a moment near the end because he looked too deeply into her and made clear what he thought of the sight. Sometimes Seth Bullock, because she would never stand beside him as his wife with their child. That kind of hate mixed with love was the worst of all. It hurt in a peculiarly painful way that made bitter laudanum and the contented haze that followed seem far too preferable by comparison.

Most of all, more than she'd once supposed it was possible for her to hate another human being, George Hearst. 

But Mr. Swearengen, despite her earliest misgivings about him, despite the death and destruction she was confident he had caused and would continue to instigate until some man he’d harmed managed to claim his revenge, she could not hate.

Mr. Swearengen sat, and Alma offered him a cup of tea. “Black darjeeling. It may not be sweet enough to suit.”

He pulled the corners of his mouth down and tilted his head. “I’m sure it will suffice.” He sipped it--noisily, she noted with chagrin--and licked his lips. “Just the way I like it, thank you. Are you not having any?”

“I had tea a little earlier.”

Mr. Swearengen held his cup and saucer somewhat clumsily, no doubt because of his missing finger. He frowned at the tea.

Alma laughed, an unfamiliar sound to her own ears. It bubbled out of her before she could click her teeth together and stop it. “Are you wishing for more sugar, after all, or are you concerned I may have poisoned you?”

She’d seen him smile while angry, seen his grin by turns seem spiteful, coy and scheming, but she didn’t recognize this man who sat in front of her now. Alma hadn’t realized that his face, with its lines and shadows and dark scruff of beard, could look quite so genuinely delighted.  

“That thought hadn’t occurred to me until you mentioned it.” He took another sip.

“What? Your expression, I’m afraid I can’t decipher its meaning.” She tried to school herself, drop her foolish grin. She failed.

“If my bearing seems foreign to you, and I have little doubt I would find it the same measure of strange in my shaving mirror, it’s owing to how I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh like that before, Mrs. Ellsworth.” He carefully put the saucer and cup on the desk they sat near. “I must admit to feeling near speechlessness at the sight.”

She bit lightly on her lower lip until she could finally managed to seem at least sober, if not somber. “ _Near_ speechless, Mr. Swearengen?”

“A rarity I realize, Mrs. Ellsworth. I suppose I can find the words to ask why you’ve summoned me here.”

“Merely to thank you. First and foremost, for your assistance when I was overcome by the shock of my husband’s death.”

His eyebrows rose. “A lady came distraught into my establishment. I had but little choice to assist and offer the comfort any gentleman should.”

Alma didn’t try to stop her smile from growing. “I hope what I’m about to say causes you no offense, Mr. Swearengen, but I think we can both rest assured that you’re not exactly any gentleman.”

“No offense taken,” he said, tilting his head. “Especially since that sentence has a multitude of meanings, based on interpretation.”

“Few gentleman would have spoken to me in the manner you did.”

His eyes cut to his teacup, like he might pick it up again. “I only offered you a drink, and pointed out that you weren’t responsible for his death when you carried on, intent on taking the blame upon yourself.”

_You didn’t fuckin’ shoot him. And don’t be goin’ off into fuckin’ hysterics, huh?_

She inwardly cringed at the vulgar word, at how often it had echoed in her mind along with the rest since that day. His words, none of them, had left her, nor had the feelings they evoked.

“You said to me, your voice stern as if you were angered, that I didn’t shoot him, and not to go into hysterics. Peppered with your usual profanities, of course. Your tone was harsh, hardly the way a gentleman might talk to a stunned, grief-stricken lady.”

He started to say something, to defend his language or his tone, she thought, but she stopped him with a raised hand.

“You didn’t treat me like a wilting flower who might fall apart at the slightest touch. And you helped me more than I might have been able to adequately express at the time. I wanted to impress upon you how grateful I am, and how much I regret not making that clear before now.”

He hadn’t coddled her or made overtures of sympathy or even tried to soothe her in the same way others did. As he’d stared at her, waiting to see if she would compose herself, an understanding passed between them. It made her stronger.

She should have been repelled by his manner, left bereft at his lack of delicacy at such a terrible time. Instead, it had rallied her and given her the ability, the _permission,_ to draw on her strength and stand tall. When she’d stepped forward and taken his arm, let him lead her upstairs to his office, Alma realized a level of trust in Al Swearengen that surpassed what others had earned in her.  

In many ways, more even than Seth Bullock.

Al didn’t move aside from a few slow blinks. “Well, Mrs. Ellsworth, please consider me suitably impressed upon by your gratitude. Though your thanks are unnecessary. Hearst had his man kill your husband, and where he leaves his muddy fucking bootprints, my natural urge is to follow right behind, mop in hand. I had no shortage of motives for my words that day.”

“And the day shots rangs out, and you rushed me into your establishment?”

He picked up his teacup with both hands. “Clearly, Hearst’s doing. And if fortune allows me to wedge in front of his dirty stomp before he slams his boot down, instinct requires action.” He took a sip.

“Mr. Swearengen, you jumped from your balcony to bodily shield me from harm.”

His eyes darkened, almost as if she’d given insult rather than praise. “I’d already deduced that the shots weren’t meant to kill, but to scare. Hearst watched, and as you’ll remember I spoke to him as if I had no idea of this plan, assuring him that he was in no danger, just as I knew I wasn’t by assisting you.”

Was Mr. Swearengen telling the truth? There seemed to be little point in refusing to acknowledge an act of selfless bravery, unless it truly hadn’t been one. But he was the type of man who might let a false belief in his bravery persist, if it served his purpose. His deflection now convinced Alma that he had been brave, her protection at least as much a motive as thumbing his nose at Hearst, and he was somehow uncomfortable being caught at such.

“Other men would have urged me to lie down and rest or run into the arms of my husband, because other men would have seen me as shaken and fragile. Yet you offered me a drink, and convinced me to complete my walk to the bank, alone.”

“Merely to show Hearst that his gambit had failed.” 

“Yes. But Mr. Ellsworth rejected the idea initially, and I suspect Mr. Bullock, Mr. Utter, Mr. Star and almost any man I’m acquainted with in this town would have done the same. Had it been left up to anything but you and my willingness to listen, I would have been escorted the remainder of the day.”

Alma cleared her throat. “I would have been . . . tended.”

He held the teacup in his lap. “Like a garden?”

Like a sheep, she thought. “Like women are tended as men take action on our behalf while attempting to shelter us from the consequence of it.”

“I knew you were capable of handling events such as they unfolded.”

Alma touched her throat, a bad habit when emotions welled, so she clasped her hands together in her lap to keep from doing it again. "Your manner with me displayed a type of respect that goes deeper than niceties, a type that gentlemen rarely afford ladies. A respect in our abilities to abide.”

He put the teacup on the desk and his palms on his thighs. “Watching you make your walk with your head held high . . . I’ll confess to you now, Mrs. Ellsworth, that was another time you left me almost speechless.”

“And I’ll confess to you, Mr. Swearengen, that when I heard the rumor of what Hearst had done to your hand, why he’d done it, I was almost speechless, as well.”

His eyebrows rose and fell in quick succession. Al Swearengen was a difficult man to take by surprise. Alma thought she’d managed it.

“Given the cold climate of relations between Hearst and most in this camp, it shouldn’t come as much a surprise that I, of all people who might be happy to twist a thorn in his paw, would end up on the blade end of his pick-axe. The reasons for such being too many to name in a visit short enough to keep people’s tongues from wagging.”

“I’m told the reason was that you wouldn’t help Mr. Hearst in regards to me and my claim.”

“Rumors flash from one mouth to the next, the details of which get jumbled as the stories grow.” He waved that off with his intact hand. 

Alma took a deep breath. “I find in Deadwood, most rumors have a suitable amount of truth to them." She clenched her jaw and made herself say the words. "The rumor of my weakness for opiates. Of my relationship with a married man.”

There, that tiny hitch in his face. She'd surprised him again. “You would be confessing those things to me now?”

“I am merely confirming those things you already know to be true. The rumor of why you lost a finger, I suspect is the same. And I am grateful, Mr. Swearengen.”

The bandage wrapped around his hand was filthy at the edges. She would not have allowed such obvious neglect on anyone under her care.

She moved into the next room, past her bed, to the small dressing table. She'd acquired a few simple medical supplies now that she had a child to care for, a child whose small bumps and bruises were not cause enough for the walk across camp in hopes of finding the doctor in a sober condition with time to care for them.

Alma returned and opened the box, the hinge squeaking with lack of use. Mr. Swearengen tipped forward to see what it contained.

She held her hands out, palms up. “Your bandage should be changed. Will you allow me?”

For a long moment, Alma thought the way he stilled and held his breath would prove too much revealed for him, and he would take his leave. Instead, he said, “Thank you kindly, but your ministrations, however gracious, are unnecessary.”

Alma spoke sweetly, but hardened her stare like she might if Sofia misbehaved. “And your wound, even partially healed, is still a danger if you do not keep it properly cleaned. Imagine the satisfaction Mr. Hearst would enjoy if an infection in this particular wound is what led to your demise.”

His thoughts on that showed in the muscle twitch in his jaw. She forged ahead while she had the advantage. “Surely, Mr. Swearengen, given your business interests and the women in your establishment who’ve had the opportunity to see you in a state of undress, you’re not opposed to exposing your hand to one woman.” She waited to allow her full meaning to settle in his mind, then stretched her hands toward him again. “I promise to be as gentle as possible.”

His lips parted, and then he held out his hand.

Alma cradled it in her palm and carefully unwound the dirty strip of cloth, bracing herself so she wouldn’t gasp or reveal unease when viewing the stump of his finger. The physical trials she’d faced since coming to Deadwood and the way Al Swearengen himself had told her not to go into hysterics like he counted on her capability to avoid it shored her up, and allowed her to clean his hand, expressionless. She applied a healing salve to the raw flesh, and wrapped a clean strip of cloth over and around it. 

He sat quietly, a few subtle jerks the only hint that anything she did caused him pain.

“As to your comment, Mr. Swearengen, about wagging tongues at the length of your visit, I would remind you what I previously said about rumors and their penchant for carrying the truth.” She looked up at him through her lashes. “I would also like to declare, so there is no misunderstanding between us, that I find myself unconcerned with the appearance of propriety in this matter.”

Finished with the bandage, she cupped his hand carefully between hers. “There. It would not do for you to appear untended.”

His eyes flashed at that word, and a warmth spread across her chest not unlike laudanum.

***

Al waited, he considered, and when he spoke it was with calculated lack of speed.

“Fine thing you not being concerned with the appearance of propriety, Mrs. Ellsworth, owing to how women who invite me to their rooms at night alone have already dug themselves a deep well of which climbing out might prove difficult, at least where wagging tongues are concerned.”

“If tongues wag, that only helps our purpose. And your connections can expedite those tongues wagging often enough in the presence of Mr. Hearst to establish that you’re . . . making your way in. With me.” The pale cream of her skin blushed pink.

 _Fucking crafty, this one._ “Our purpose,” he stressed, “made to convince Hearst that I’ve changed my mind to do his bidding, concern about my other fingers’ fates having made me see reason?”

She didn’t answer, merely tilted her head in assent.

“And once Hearst has come to believe, by wagging tongues and my own confession, that I’ve made in-roads with you,” he said, pausing for effect, his double-meaning he hoped at least as clear as hers, “you and I together will put in motion a plan I assume you're formulating even as we speak, the end point of which being Hearst with his head pointed toward Hades and his boots jutting from the dirt in which he’s buried until a passerby pisses on his grave before walking away in them.”

She smiled smooth as honey. “I knew we understood each other, Mr. Swearengen.”

He understood she’d managed to not only tend him but their very conversation from the moment he stepped foot inside. Al should have taken to anger over it. He should have, in word or deed, made a motion to put her in her place, made it known that she had no sway he didn’t allow her and that even the most laced-up, powdered and perfumed pussy wouldn’t prevent him from critical thought and expedient action, independently arisen from his own mind.

He sure as shit shouldn’t have felt pride at her grit and things he’d had no hand in, but the swell of it came unbidden anyway.

“We do understand each other, Mrs. Ellsworth.” He rose, and when she stood in front of him, he stepped close enough to encroach on her personal space, unsurprised that she held her ground. “If I were to escort you to dinner tomorrow, I assume you’d prefer to be seen by the town gossips and busybodies downstairs rather than my establishment or Tom Nuttall’s.”

“In addition to the benefit of the lack of undress, it seems more likely that Mr. Hearst or his men would take note of us downstairs with less suspicion. Yes. And,” she raised a finger, “Sofia will have to join us, from time to time. I’ve assured her she has nothing to fear, and it would make a skeptic of those who notice if my suitor doesn’t seem to embrace the idea of fatherhood by spending time with us both.”

Jesus Christ, Al was going to cause his Indian’s head to chew its way out of its box and sprout wings to flee on when he untangled his mind that night about all the things he had to consider and had never considered before but now clicked into place like gears freshly oiled. Not that he’d be a father figure for the child. It’d be in name only, but by his estimation, that was a better father than most in this world ever got, and he figured he could manage that with some small measure of competency.

“Of course,” he agreed. “And if tongues wag at the purpose and content of _this_ visit, and I presume future visits under similar circumstances, are those rumors for deceitful purposes only, or will those carry a hint of the truth?”

“As I said, I’ve found the gossip in Deadwood generally contains more fact than fiction.” Her gaze didn't waver from his as she said it. She pressed her lips together, then parted them just enough to let the pink tip of her tongue flash an appearance in what might have been an unconscious gesture, or, knowing her the way he was coming around to, might have been as calculated as a rattlesnake’s strike.

“To give at least a little credence to any rumors that might arise about tonight, Mr. Swearengen, you may kiss me, if you wish.”

Alma held her hand out, her meaning clear that he may kiss the back of it. Much like his reasoning about whether to come when she called, he played over the possibilities in his mind, including his pointing out that he’d rarely ever kissed anyone, even while fucking them, let alone frequented such a genteel expression as putting lips to hand.

Al took her hand, and looking at her as arrow-straight in the eyes as she’d taken doing to him, he turned it over and pressed a kiss, firm and long, into the middle of her soft palm.

He admired the stiffness of her neck and the muscles twitching underneath her skin to prevent her from giving away either disgust or pleasure. Fucking admired it, and took no small measure of pride that the pinked up apples of her cheeks told him how she really felt about it despite all her concentration against it.

“Good night, Mrs. Ellsworth. I look forward to dinner tomorrow.” He held his bandaged hand up and turned it, suppressing a cringe at how cold and brick-like the ache when he lifted it above his elbow. “And thank you for your tender mercies.”

“Thank you for the act that required them. Regardless of what you might claim was your truthful motivation.”

As she opened the door, Trixie’s voice drifted up the stairs. Sounded like she was telling Sofia a story. Likely a good one, given Trixie’s sharp ears and ability to assign meaning whether the author of the words meant to include the theme of his tale or not.

“Good night, Mr. Swearengen,” she said, and with that she closed the door.

***

Al strolled into the Gem cradling his hand against his stomach and hoping his cock didn’t stand out obvious in his trousers to give away exactly how much sway Mrs. Ellsworth had managed with her straight spine and rosy blush.

There was a woman who could have been pampered to ruin, but instead who, given a man’s frame and bearing and station in life to match her strength of will and intellect, could have rivaled Al himself if she chose to take over a town like Deadwood.

She'd compared men's treatment of women like her to them tending a flower, and she wasn't wrong. Most _men_ had it wrong, though. Fragile fucking flowers aren't the ones to spare a thought and time to tend, as they'll be the first reclaimed by the dirt. It's the buds that open in the wild atop a sturdy stem, leaning in the wind but springin' back, might prove worth the rain and morning sunshine, the source of which happens outside any man's urges and abilities anyhow. But only a fool failed to notice or appreciate what had sprouted up and bloomed beside his feet despite him having no say in the matter.

If Al ever let himself think he was tending this particular flower, he held little doubt that another short conversation with the widow Ellsworth would give him knots to untangle that would set his thinking straight on the matter. 

She was a woman who wanted the truth, who faced what passed in front of her now, unflinching. If she'd been low-born and ever had to fuck for food, he could picture some of Trixie's words coming right out of her mouth. Both of them were clever in their ways, hardened underneath where most women were soft, no matter that different circumstances had built up the callus. 

Like Trixie, Mrs. Ellsworth didn't need to hear pretty words, and in that lack of need she suited Al, who hadn’t anything pretty on the back of his tongue to utter. 

“Well?” Dan poured a shot and pushed it toward Al as he approached the bar.

Al tossed the shot back and let out his breath in a hiss.

“Did she want to thank yeh, or what?”

“She did.”

“ _And?_ ” Dan leaned an elbow on the bar, eyes wide, brows up. Al might find cause to punch him soon.

He held up the shot glass, and waited for another to be poured. “ _And_ , insomuch as I hate Hearst and have dreamed of nothing less than him hanging from a rope with crows pecking at his rotting, cocksucking corpse, I’ve had a new feeling toward him tonight, one of which I’m as astounded by as I am unfamiliar.”

He threw back the drink and slapped the glass down on the bar. Alma Ellsworth probably had similar fantasies of Hearst strung up for all to see, shamed in his decomposed state. If the look her in shining eyes when she’d laid out her intent earlier had been any indication, she'd had worse thoughts about Hearst's demise and planned a humiliation and defeat no less final or emasculating.

“Barely can I believe I’m saying this, Dan, but I think I pity George fucking Hearst.”

Al headed upstairs. He had some misgivings to rake over with the chief, and felt he owed him warning that after all their time together and lively conversations, another's head would likely soon replace him.


End file.
